D&D General One thing I hate about the Sorcerer

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't entirely disagree, and I even think having a Warlord class ala 4e, which I thought was awesome from my limited experience with that edition, would be pretty cool. What I don't want is 3e's Swashbuckler from Complete Warrior. Likewise, some stuff, like an archer class, doesn't feel like it can support too many sub-classes, which I think is necessary for a concept to warrant a class. It's definitely a balancing act though.

The problem of differentiating a "class fantasy," which is a good (thematic) seed around which to build a class, from more general thematic or mechanical elements, which are not enough to cross that bar. "Elementalist" is too generic to build an entire class around, but it is a great focus for classes that already have an established class fantasy.

And, to be clear, I don't actually believe my list of 24 is the end-all, be-all. Perhaps new archetypes can be discovered with time. I personally consider the Avenger to be a great example of a relatively-recently discovered archetype, which taps into the thematic space of things like Ezio Auditore (who, despite being an "Assassin," behaves rather more like an Avenger due to the order's religious nature.) Certainly, 30 years ago, the idea of a "machinist"/"engineer" type character would have been just offloaded to items, but these days, "person who is a genius with devices and tools to achieve amazing success" is established enough to merit attention in its own right. D&D, and its descendant WoW, played a huge part in the development of "Druid" and "Paladin" as distinct class fantasies worthy of attention and individual expression. Conversely, "Illusionist" was once its own distinct thing, a rarity among early-edition stuff where a specialized class was created for that role rather than just refocusing an existing one, but that class-fantasy has quite clearly fallen by the wayside, becoming absorbed by the Wizard (its near-twin) or, in many cases, the Psion and related concepts (e.g. GW2's Mesmer, the "Psychic" or other concepts in Final Fantasy, and to a certain limited extent the modern D&D Bard.)

 

[Frozen_Heart]

"Elementalist" is too generic to build an entire class around, but it is a great focus for classes that already have an established class fantasy.

Interestingly, Pathfinder 2e's elementalist class is extremely well received and popular.

Though I do agree that elementalist could easily be a selection of subclasses, for some reason DnD seems to largely shy away from elemental themes. Even axing the playtest elemental sorcerers.

I was so hyped for the elemental feats in the new planescape UA. But those got axed too and never made it through.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I will have to admit that as my son is approaching 20, and we watched the Potter movies when he was a kid, I'm not fully versed in what makes a 'Potter' mage. WoW Mage? Depends on the era and abilities I guess but, D&D Wizard/Sorc/Warlock, are distinct, and as 5th is evergreen for a bit here now, I dont think what you are describing is a class, its an uber-Mage.

i think the most defining feature of the 'potter' mage in contrast to the DnD spellcasters is that they don't have to concern themselves with spellslots and casting capacity, you know the spells you know and you can cast them over and over til the cows come home if you need to, the only real issue with porting that into DnD is ensuring they can't access any spells that would be problematic if you could cast them over and over and over, cure wounds and fireball for example.

in DnD mechanics it'd almost definitely be a cantrip-focus caster with ritual casting and the ability to infinite cast select levelled spells (in a not dissimilar way to the warlock's mask of many faces or otherworldly leap invocations) from a curated spell list, designed with the knowledge that they will be infinite casting them.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I also don't think D&D need to be able to represent any concept anyone ever came up in fiction. They need to choose a bunch of concepts that they want to be archetypal for their game and focus on them. That in different IPs have mages that work differently doesn't mean you can or should just shove them all into one IP. The end result is just an incoherent mess.

Unfortunately, the design of D&D magic is working against you here. I've argued before that one of the greatest problems with D&D magic is that it tries to cover the magic of too many classic narratives, and as a result it hoovers up all of their strengths and few to none of their weaknesses. This inclines "magic" to feeling like it should be able to capture All The Things, because its initial net was cast so widely. You and I both know that the only result from trying to do that is to create a broken game--unless you insert the wildly unpopular draconian costs/punishments for using magic, so folks just stop bothering with it at all, which isn't an improvement.

It's not for nothing, incidentally, that in the original post where I articulated my 24 options, I split them into five that I think are shoe-ins (Warlord, Assassin, Swordmage, Shaman, Psion) and six that are varying degrees of less plausible. Those first four have all been outright classes or near-total class overhauls, to one extent or another, in multiple past editions of D&D (Warlord 4e/Marshal 3.x, Assassin in 2e-4e, Swordmage 4e/Duskblade 3e/"Elf" 1e, Shaman 4e/multiple classes 3e/Priest kits in 2e, multiple 3e-4e classes/Psionicist 2e).

Interestingly, Pathfinder 2e's elementalist class is extremely well received and popular.

Though I do agree that elementalist could easily be a selection of subclasses, for some reason DnD seems to largely shy away from elemental themes. Even axing the playtest elemental sorcerers.

I was so hyped for the elemental feats in the new planescape UA. But those got axed too and never made it through.

I haven't even heard of the PF2e Elementalist, so I couldn't really comment. Perhaps there is more going on here. As noted above, things can change over time. The closest precursor I know of from PF1e, the Kineticist, was basically just "monk, except with magic" as I had understood it, which was a big part of my "elementalist is a flavor that gets applied to lots of other classes" conclusion.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

I haven't even heard of the PF2e Elementalist, so I couldn't really comment. Perhaps there is more going on here. As noted above, things can change over time. The closest precursor I know of from PF1e, the Kineticist, was basically just "monk, except with magic" as I had understood it, which was a big part of my "elementalist is a flavor that gets applied to lots of other classes" conclusion.

2e kineticist is definitely its own thing with its own mechanics. I never really looked at Pathfinder 1e so can't comment on that.

But like I said, I do believe that elementalist can be done well with subclasses. DnD just refuses to do so.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I find it so curious how much time some people apparently enjoying spending making post after post in the thread after thread about 'X' thing they want in the game... knowing full well that WotC is never going to make it, and that most 3PPs are not either because they apparently are like the only person who actually wants it. So rather than just make it themselves for their own game, they just post about it and argue with people about it over and over and over again.

It almost gives the impression that 'X' is not something the person actually cares about having for their game to play, but rather what they have available to post about when they come onto EN World. It's a topic they will happily just argue for whenever the opportunity arises. They just enjoy the repetitive debate.

 

[James Gasik]

The Kineticist was simply a new take on the original 3.5 Warlock, a class with all day at will magic balanced against spell slot users. I actually liked the 3.5 Warlock, it was a fun and flavorful class (with a few sticking points that were fixed with the later Dragonfire Adept, like terrible skill points).

People cried foul when the Warlock could use Eldritch Blast all day, every day, but in actual play, being able to chuck a couple d6's turn after turn really wasn't all that impactful in combat. Even the stronger Eldritch Invocations, which combined multiple spell effects, didn't outshine what a full caster could do.

The tipping point (much like the current Warlock) only came about in a situation where the full casters ran out of gas- but in such a scenario, even the so-called "resourceless" classes (Fighter, Rogue) were perfectly happy to find a place to nap because they are fully reliant on magic for the most important resource- hit points. A problem the 5e Fighter sort of solves, but not so much the other classes.

That's really a problem 5e has; there's nothing wrong with an "all day" class, but unless all the classes share that paradigm, it's somewhat meaningless unless the DM goes out of their way to enforce encounter-rich adventuring days, something the system itself fights against, forcing you to houserule and ban quite a few things out of existence to make work. Or just make every adventure a race against time, I suppose, which kind of gets exhausting (for me at least).

This ties into another issue, D&D's perennial downtime problem. The game isn't really built to encourage long spans of time where adventures aren't, well, adventuring. A decent level caster can dig deep and find a whole bunch of interesting things to do with their magic (my current group considered taking a week off for some side project and my DM shuddered when I joked about casting 14 Legend Lore spells to get more information about the stranger goings on in the adventure).

What do non-casters do with downtime? Learn languages or get tool proficiencies? Spend months to make a suit of armor? Go looking for barfights? Basically try to get side adventures because they're effectively twiddling their thumbs?

Anyways, I'm off in the weeds here, since this doesn't really have anything to do with the Sorcerer. I played a Sorcerer to about level 8 though, and I can share my issues with the class:

*Limited spell selection: ok, this has always been problematic, but it's made worse by giving the Sorcerer a stripped-down spell list that enforces a theme of Sorcerers being more concerned with blowing things up than other things. A Wizard can choose to be a blaster and can actually be built to be just as good as a Sorcerer (if not better), but still have all the crowd control and utility!

*Over-reliance on Sorcery points: this is the big stickler. Most of the cool things the class does rely on Sorcery points. This spills over into subclass mechanics in some cases: I played a Wild Sorcerer, so my subclass abilities relied on random chance, DM permission ("Um, Mr. DM, do you think I could get my Tides of Luck back?") and Bend Luck, a fairly weak ability when compared to similar effects, costing 2 Sorcery points, which I needed to use Metamagic!

*Very conservative Metamagic design: Wow, I can Quicken a Fireball! And then...what? Use a Cantrip? Dodge? Most of the time, Metamagic isn't even that impressive. Twin Spell can be great, but it can only be used with a few spells you're going to know. Most of the time, the best use for my Sorcery points was a poor man's Arcane Recovery!

Some of these things were addressed in later books- bonus spells from subclass, yes, thank you. More passive abilities that don't use Sorcery Points, thanks. More Metamagic options? Eh, ok I guess, lol.

Maybe we do need to kill the Wizard, but I think what really needs to happen is for the Sorcerer to get out of the Wizard's shadow.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No

I want a 3PP class that has more than 5 subclass that I can go to 10% of DMs and they know what the hell it is.

Level Up is your best bet in the current environment, in terms of support and recognition.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Some of the problem is that Harry Potter magic is ridiculously OP if you're going to truly port it over directly, and if you don't port it over directly, you're looking at already adapting it, which means you're already limiting it (severely) compared to the books.

HP wizards essentially treat all spells like cantrips, and only get tired after literally hours of continuous spellcasting. With just a modicum of training (aka, what Dumbledore's Army could cobble together just with their own efforts), you can get quite competent duellists who function more like impressively-armed soldiers than like Hermetic wizards with tricksy powers. Spells also often have nearly unlimited range ("Accio Firebolt!"), durations of hours to days, the ability to trivially-easily lock down enemies or end combats with a single well-struck spell, etc. While at the same time, things that are trivial magic to a D&D character are notoriously, fiendishly difficult magic. Even the simplest kinds of transfiguration and conjuration are profoundly difficult magic. Summoning man-sized creatures out of thin air is something only the most powerful and talented HP wizards can do. Performing magic without a wand is nearly impossible for the vast majority of people. Etc.

HP magic works the way it needs to work to make an interesting book series. It is absolutely rife with abuse potential for anyone actually trying to use it scientifically (as analyzed, IMO poorly, by the [in]famous "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" fan fiction.) A huge amount of why it is so fun is that it's unexplained, mysterious, and folks just...don't use it with all that much cleverness or subtlety in the books, apart from scoundrels like Rita Skeeter. Even Voldemort himself has a hilariously limited view of what magic can actually achieve, and his whole thing is supposed to be power for power's sake and nothing else.

At best, a "Harry Potter Wizard" class would only limitedly approximate what HP wizards do. It couldn't be represented with Vancian spellcasting, even in principle, because Vancian spellcasting isn't compatible with the kinds of magic done--not even the Warlock model actually captures it. You'd be, effectively, building an entire level 1-20 spellcasting class that never learns anything above a cantrip...but their cantrips can become ridiculously powerful...but they can only use so many until they have to rest a bit, etc., etc. It just ends up being "I want to use a fundamentally different conception of what magic is than what D&D has had baked into it for all but one edition."

Ironically, 4e would have no problem making a Harry Potter Wizard, you'd just reskin the Power Point classes for it, and indeed the whole "spam your best option" bug/feature that Power Point classes have in 4e would fit even better for the Harry Potter theme than it does the Psionics theme. Hell, you can even rename "Battlemind" to "Auror" and you're already off to the races.

Mage Hand Press has a warmage class (with great support @Minigiant ) that is all about the exploitation of cantrip magic.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Interestingly, Pathfinder 2e's elementalist class is extremely well received and popular.

Though I do agree that elementalist could easily be a selection of subclasses, for some reason DnD seems to largely shy away from elemental themes. Even axing the playtest elemental sorcerers.

I was so hyped for the elemental feats in the new planescape UA. But those got axed too and never made it through.

Level Up's Elementalist class (from MOAR Complete I believe) is also excellent and well-received.